Wednesday, December 5, 2012

BEATRICE WILL SHE BE QUEEN?

The Feast of Trumpets heralded through the blowing of trumpets the final phase of the Jewish religious year which, as we shall see, typologically brought to completion God’s plan for the final disposition of sin and the inauguration of a new world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwKLxAKmIPI
Published on Monday 17 September 2012 02:07

Princess Beatrice said she sobbed with joy as she reached the summit of Mont Blanc, western Europe’s tallest peak.

The 24-year-old told Hello! magazine she suffered a fit of “constant nervous giggles” when she arrived for her adventure, which she shared with friends including Holly and Sam Branson and their father, the Virgin tycoon Sir Richard.
The princess said: “It was so overwhelming I began to cry with joy for making it to this magical world at the top of Europe.”
She posed on top of the peak for the magazine with her fellow climbers, Sam’s fiancee Isabella Calthorpe, Sam Richardson and Phil Nevin, with whom Beatrice ran the 2010 London Marathon dressed as a giant caterpillar.
The mountain – which measures 4,810 metres above sea level – claims many lives each year.
Holly Branson said her father came close to an accident as they trained. “There were places where we had to jump holes that looked never-ending below,” she said. “At one point, Dad’s leg went through one. It stopped at his knee and all was OK, but he was excited that he had fallen in a crevasse.

”Of the three tenets of a Freemason's profession, which are Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth, it may be said that Truth is the Column of Wisdom, whose rays penetrate and enlighten the inmost recesses of our Lodge; Brotherly Love, the Column of Strength, which binds us as one family in the indissoluble bond of fraternal affection; and Relief, the Column of Beauty, whose ornaments, more precious than the lilies and pomegranates that adorned the pillars of the porch, are the widow's tear of joy and the orphan's prayer of gratitude.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwKLxAKmIPI

Another Death on Mont Blanc

According to the AP, the PGHM of Chamonix reports that a 60 year old woman from Thiez France (in the Haute Savoie) suffered a fatal fall while climbing Mont Blanc today during her descent on the voie normale (normal route). Her name has not yet been released. The weather today was full sun, and the weather system has been a very stable high pressure system for around one week on the mountain.
We were out hiking this afternoon, and crossed the Bionassy glacier on our way to the Col de Tricot. The Bionassy Glacier runs in between the Dome de Goûter and the Aiguille du Bionassy. This is the region were several people have died this year in bad weather, becoming disoriented and falling on the steep face of the Bionassy.
We heard very loud rock fall and/or ice fall several times this afternoon and saw two planes go into and out of the area. Apparently it was one of those rock falls which resulted in this woman’s death. According to the report, she was thrown off balance by the rock fall while she was traversing the couloir of the Dome de Goûter at 3200m of altitude. She fell around 100 meters, and died despite rapid intervention from rescuers.

A legend goes that once in the beautiful and serene Spanish countryside of Mont Blanc a dreadful dragon had unleashed a reign of terror. To pacify the beast, the villagers decided to offer a daily sacrifice. Every day a name was drawn and the person was sent to the dragon’s cave. It so happened that one day the king’s daughter was chosen for the sacrifice.As the dragon was about to devour the princess, a knight Sant Jordi (Catalan for St George) appeared and killed the dragon. Miraculously a rose bush bearing red roses sprung up from the spot where the dragon’s blood had spilled. Sant Jordi then presented the fair lady a rose.From that day onwards on every 23rd April, the men of Mont Blanc present the women a rose. The women respond by giving them a book. The festivities of Sant Jordi last for a week. During the festival delicious and elaborate meals are served to guests dressed in traditional costumes. The streets of Mont Blanc are transformed into street theaters where plays based on medieval themes especially the legend of Sant Jordi are enacted. Juggling and music are other features of the festival.Festival of Sant Jordi at Mont Blanc is truly romantic.

Lady Di and Sarah connection
Lady Louisa Jane Russell (8 July 1812 – 31 March 1905) was the wife of James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn, and the daughter of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, by his second wife Lady Georgiana Gordon. She was the mother of Louisa Montagu-Douglas-Scott, Duchess of Buccleuch, and therefore the paternal great grandmother of Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, and the maternal 2nd great-grandmother of Prince William of Gloucester and Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester. She was also the mother of James Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Abercorn, and therefore the paternal great-grandmother of Cynthia Spencer, Countess Spencer, and the paternal 3rd great-grandmother of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the maternal 4th great-grandmother of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry of Wales. Through her daughter Lady Louisa Jane Hamilton she also is the maternal 3rd great-grandmother of Sarah, Duchess of York.

Who was Earca? Who was Earca or Erca? It's a very big question mark and the subject of heated debate amongst royal genealogists. Very little historical evidence can be gathered to support Earca's existence. We have only stories and legends.

In one legend, Erca was a Princess of Ireland who married King Erc of Argyll and she then became Queen Erca. She was the mother, not the wife, of Fergus Mor mac Erc, who went on to become the first great King of Scots Dalriada.

It seems almost as if, in an effort to invent a lineage for Fergus Mor mac Erc, the first great King of Scots Dalriada, the writers of royal genealogies decided that the father of Fergus must be named Erc and his mother named Erca, else why would Fergus Mor be called mac Erc?

These writers would have us believe a family tree in which Queen Earca becomes the mother of Fergus Mor mac Erc and his brothers Loarn and Angus mac Erc. In other words, these genealogists assert that Earca was an Irish princess of royal blood who married King Erc of Argyll (Scotland) as part of a dynastic alliance between Ireland and Scotland. Ennobled by her Irish bloodline, her three sons went on to become the progenitors of the three main branches of Scottish royalty.

That legend is reflected in the family tree for the Kings of Dalriada below:

As this genealogy indicates, three Irish clans descended from King Erc and Queen Erca, and they moved from northern Ireland to Dalriada at the end of the fifth century. Each branch was headed by one of Erc's sons. These sons and their clans then became rivals for the high kingship of Scots Dalriada

King Erc and Sons

King Erc's three sons, namely Fergus, Loarn and Angus, divided Dalriada between them as shown below.

The three sons were rivals for land and power and the genealogy becomes confusing at this point. Indeed there is a school of royal genealogy that asserts that Princess Earca, the bearer of the holy bloodline of the House of David, was not the mother of the three sons, but rather a daughter of the second-eldest son, Loarn, who sought to gain the upper hand over his powerful brother, Fergus, by making an alliance with an Irish prince through marriage.

According to this legend, King Loarn mac Earc took the land near the Firth of Loarn, married a local girl, raised a family and had a daughter whom he named Earca. This daughter (a granddaughter of King Erc) was a princess of Scots, not an Irish woman, and it was she who joined the House of Dalriada with the House of O'Neill in Ireland.

King Loarn arranged a marriage between his daughter Erca and an Irish prince named Muireadhach ("Meriadoc"), son of King Owen MacNiall. King Loarn's goal was not only to bring the royal blood of Ireland to Scotland, but also to gain the backing of the Irish King in a bid for the throne of all Scots Dalriada.

This legend effectively makes the bloodlines of the other two Scottish royal houses (Fergus and Angus) inferior to that of Loarn's. It seems to assert that all three brothers were the offspring of King 'Erc and an unnamed Queen of Scots Dalriada who was either common Irish or from a local Scots family. In other words, no marriage contract with the Irish royal family had yet taken place until Loarn married his daughter to Prince Muireadhach Mac Eoghan (son of Owen).

If that is true, it contradicts the family tree in the illustration above.

We therefore want to look for some historical corroboration of this claim. Was there really a King Owen MacNiall, and did he really have a son named Muireadhach who married a princess of Scots?

Indeed there was.

Owen [Eogan] mac Niall was the son of the Irish King Niall of the Nine Hostages and under him the Royal House of O'Neill of Tir Eoghan came into being. Owen and his sons resided at the Grianan of Aileach a castle near Derry [in County Donegal, northeastern Ireland]. They were an easy boatride away from Dalriada. See photo of the castle below.
Because the first Kings of the Scots in Dalriada were originally Irish commoners (not of royal blood), they were still vassals to the High King of Ireland, and they had to pay an annual rent to the King.

Legend has it that during one of their annual visits to Ireland, the chiefs of the Scottish clans proposed that Owen's son Muireadhach should marry Earca, daughter of King Loarn of Dal Riada [Scotland]. This was, essentially, the offer of a political pact between the two fathers.

King Owen MacNeil, son of the legendary King Neil of the Nine Hostages, approved the marriage, apparently because he saw some advantage in an alliance with Loarn against Fergus Mor.

The Scots Dalriada House of Loarn thus became wed to the Irish Royal House of MacNeil, and by extension the House of David. The marriage between Muireadhach and Princess Earca of Loarn may not have been the first such Irish-Scots marriage (perhaps both legends are true, and Earca was the granddaughter of an earlier Queen Earca!) but this story has a ring of truth about it.

It is a strong argument in favor of the superiority of the House of Loarn, and it makes sense out of a lot of feuding that went on between the two brothers, Fergus and Loarn, thereafter.

The advantage that King Owen saw in marrying his son Prince Muireadach mac Eogan to Princess Earca of Loarn soon became apparent when King Loarn abruptly died. Prince Muireadach inherited the Scottish lands of Dal Riada near the firth of Loarn, a key port on the northwestern coast of Scotland.

Muirdeach, Earca and their sons began grabbing up land, and they had the High Kings of Ireland to back them. By right of their descent from the House of Judah, if not primogeniture, they could claim superiority to King Fergus Mor and the other chieftains in the region.

Of these four main branches of the Irish royal family living in Dalriada, the branch of main interest is that of the Cenel Ercae, headed by Muirchertach mac Muiredach. It is from this branch that the Irish Kings of Scots Dalriada descend.

Again, we must underscore the fact that the Princess Earca descends from King Loarn mac Erc, the second eldest son of King Erc. It was Princess Earca's uncle, Fergus Mor Mac Erc, the eldest son of King Erc, who was then reigning as King of Scots Dalriada. King Loarn, by marrying his daughter to a Prince of Ireland, had made a clever alliance that put the power and might of the Irish royal family behind his lineage.

If the descendants of Loarn are the one and only true "bloodline of David," then they (and not the descendants of Fergus Mor!) had a legitimate claim to right of kingship by virtue of royal blood.

What we have here, obviously, is a Celtic knot of confusion and the makings for a very long feud between two branches of the royal family of Scots Dalriada.

Blood Feud One may see instantly why there was bitter fighting between the two main branches of the royal family of Scots Dalriada. It was essentially a fight over who had the right to rule: The patrilineal descendant of the local king, or the dynastic descendant of Ireland and the (matrilineal) Bloodline of David? Among Pictish tribes, the kingship descends through the mother, not the father, which made things even more complicated: Many cousins were eligible to be the clan's king.

This blood feud lasted for hundreds of years, and it did not reach its dramatic end until the time of Loarn's most famous descendant: MacBeth. King Malcolm III, the patrilineal descendant, solved this vexing problem by killing MacBeth, his rival, and brutally forcing Queen Gruoch (Lady MacBeth, the matrilineal queen) to be his bride.

THE wedding of Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, the 16th Duke of Hamilton, took place at Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh on Saturday followed by a reception at Lennoxlove House near Haddington.

The Duke, 33, Scotland's premier peer, married Sophie Ann Rutherford - an interior designer whose family comes from the Borders - in a traditional ceremony in front of more than 300 guests.

The wedding party then returned to Lennoxlove, owned by the duke, where guests enjoyed an acrobatic display from a Bulldog aircraft. Alexander's late father Angus, 71, the 15th Duke of Hamilton, who passed away last June, was a keen pilot and spent 11 years in the RAF.

The couple had announced their engagement last March, and were married by the Rev Neil Gardner - originally from Dunbar - at the same church where the Queen's granddaughter, Zara Phillips, will marry English rugby player Mike Tindall in July.

And little more than a week after the world had celebrated another royal marriage between the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in London, there was a new Countess of Cambridge in Miss Rutherford - taking the title from her husband, who is also the Earl of Cambridge.

In addition, Miss Rutherford, 34, became the Duchess of Hamilton upon wedding the Duke.

The venue had added significance as Canongate Kirk is the kirk of Holyroodhouse, and the Duke is the hereditary Keeper of the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

His best man for the wedding was his younger brother, Lord John Douglas-Hamilton, while one of the readings came from his sister Lady Ann Douglas-Hamilton.

Among the distinguished guests to attend the wedding was David Wilson, Baron Wilson of Tillyorn, Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, while the Duke's uncle, James Douglas-Hamilton, Baron Selkirk of Douglas, gave a short speech and toast to the bride and groom.

Sir Garth Morrison, Lord Lieutenant of East Lothian, was a guest along with wife Gill - having attended the royal wedding in London just eight days previously.

He told the Courier: "It was a friendly, family wedding on Saturday - it wasn't a big state occasion.

"The only major disappointment about the reception was that it did happen to rain! We had plans to be in the walled garden outside but that had to be abandoned and we were in the big house.

"But it was good fun and we circled around and met people. I'm glad to say the rain stopped just in time for an acrobatics display of a Bulldog aircraft.

"At about 7pm, the Duke and Duchess were then driven away in a very handsome 1930s Rolls Royce, and I would expect there was a family party at night."
It is believed that the couple will live together on the Lennoxlove Estate.